Shop Notes September, 2022 |
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Plante CC-1 This Plante CC-1 is a custom made 00 size guitar. 14 frets to the body, spruce top and ebony fingerboard, headplate, and bridge. Mother of pearl diamond inlays adorn the fretboard. | | |
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The ebony headplate, like the rest of the guitar, is bound in vintage-inspired off-white style. |
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The back and sides of this instrument are made of flamed mahogany. The neck features an ebony heel cap, and the center strip binding frames and enhances the figure of the back. |
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This guitar was finished with lacquer specially mixed to give a well-loved vintage hue. Modern "water-white" lacquer tends not to yellow much over time, so we put a little age on this lacquer by adding special tints. Also, notice the LR Baggs electronics nestled in the sound hole. This one came gig ready! Click below to hear how it sounds: |
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60's Supro Coronado Restoration A couple months back, a friend brought down a recent craigslist find: a disassembled but nearly complete Supro Coronado II electric guitar. Totally cool, totally messed up. The screws that held the neck on were torn out, and the fretboard was coming off. Missing a tuning key, bridge, and nut, but otherwise intact. These guitars are fairly well engineered, but total departures in design. Most notable, they have hollow bodies made of fiberglass, which screw together from the back. They are reinforced, but not all survived string tension as well as this one. | | |
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The first order of business will be removing this fingerboard. An iron is heated and applied to the fretboard. I carefully cut through the glue seam with a thin knife, specially made for separating joints. | | |
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Finally the fingerboard is removed. You can see that this neck is fitted with a metal reinforcement which takes up nearly the whole gluing surface. I have to remove the old glue, and carefully replane the surface of the neck to remove a few imperfections. I need the fretbaord to glue up very straight, because these original frets are unworn, but tiny. I'll have very little wiggle room with the fretwork after the fact, so I'm extra careful to glue it up nice and straight. | | |
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The failure of this fretboard joint had caused a lot of chipping, so I knew we were going into the spray booth, but before we do we will patch in this missing section of binding. The black lacquer just barely laps the binding material, so fixing this first will ensure an original look. | | |
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Here is the crisp lacquer line after painting is done. It helps it feel like its really back in one piece. | | |
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I found some reproductions of the original Kluson butterfly tuners and put them through a gentle antiquing process. | | |
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Here's a nice shot of the first assembly. Checking nut slot depths and saddle action. Notice the retro silkscreening on the pickup cover. Extremely fancy. |
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And, voila! The instrument is fully restored and working perfectly. Hear how it sounds below: |
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